Building Trust in Forest Climate Action: Digital MRV for a Tree-Based U.S. Economy

The U.S. forest sector is at a turning point. As climate impacts intensify and federal leadership reconfigures, new tools such as AI, satellite data, and digital traceability offer a path forward. But for these technologies to deliver real impact, they must serve a broader tree-based economy: landowners, industries, communities, and climate actors alike. This session explores how digital measurement, reporting, and verification (dMRV) can evolve from informing narrow offset protocols into a public-facing infrastructure of trust, transparency, and climate effectiveness starting at the scale of an individual tree. The session convenes forest leaders, data innovators, and designers to ask: What would it take to build a digital backbone for forest climate action that works for all? And how can we use data not just to monitor carbon, but to unlock a resilient tree-based economy? Hosted by CTrees, a science-technology NGO accelerating tree- based dMRV, this session builds bridges between real-world needs and research frontiers.